Beltane the Smith eBook

CHAPTER XLI

HOW THEY RODE INTO THE WILDERNESS

Fast galloped the good horse, bursting through underbrush
and thicket with the roar of the pursuit following
ever distant and more distant; and ever Beltane spurred
deeper into those trackless wilds where few dare adventure
them by reason of evil spirits that do haunt these
solitudes (as they do say) and, moreover, of ravening
beasts.

Strongly and well the good horse bore them, what time
the sun waxed fierce and hot, filling the woods with
a stifling heat, a close, windless air dank and heavy
with the scent of leaves and bracken. The hue
and cry had sunk long since, lost in distance, and
nought broke the brooding silence but the stir of
their going, as, checking their headlong pace, Beltane
brought the powerful animal to slow and leisured gait.
And presently, a gentle wind arose, that came and went,
to fan brow and cheek and temper the sun’s heat.

And now, as they rode through sunlight and shadow,
Beltane felt his black mood slowly lifted from him
and knew a sense of rest, a content unfelt this many
a day; he looked, glad-eyed, upon the beauty of the
world about him, from green earth to an azure heaven
peeping through a fretted screen of branches; he marked
the graceful, slender bracken stirring to the soft-breathing
air, the mighty boles of stately trees that reached
out sinuous boughs one to another, to touch and twine
together amid a mystery of murmuring leaves. All
this he saw, yet heeded not at all the round-mailed
arms that clasped him in their soft embrace, nor the
slender hands that held upon his girdle.

So rode they through bosky dell and dingle, until
the sun, having climbed the meridian, sank slowly
westwards; and Sir Fidelis spake soft-voiced: